Deshaun Watson’s Out. Now What?

The best young quarterback in the league is out for the season. So, now what?

Before I get into how Deshaun Watson’s injury completely fucked your season, let’s talk about how unfortunate it is that one of football’s top young players is lost for the season. He joins the ranks of Aaron Rodgers, Odell Beckham Jr., J.J. Watt and a whole host of other stars on the long-term injury list. Watson has been lighting it up since he took to the field in the second half of Week 1. He’s putting up ungodly numbers and helped to create the season’s best game in last week’s matchup against Russell Wilson and the Seahawks when he threw for over 400 yards, rushing for 67 more and scoring four times.

So yeah. He’s, um, good.

This week in practice Watson tore his ACL, ending his season and throwing owners across the fantasy football universe into a state of pure, unadulterated fear. And the trouble extends beyond Watson owners. Anyone who owns DeAndre Hopkins or Lamar Miller should be shaking in their boots. Without a quarterback capable of getting the ball in his hands, Hopkins is looking at a rough go’round. Last year, when the Texans had arguably the least threatening set of arms in NFL history under center, Nuk had his worst year since his rookie season. With Watson running the show this season, Hopkins was on pace for 1,300 yards and 16 scores. Now that Watson’s sidelined, it’s going to be a struggle for Hopkins to even generate a significant number of targets.

Miller has been an above average player for the Texans, rushing for over 1,000 yards in his first year on the team and averaging 71 yards per game since joining Houston. But since Watson took over, Miller has been even better, scoring four touchdowns (he’s averaged 5.6 per season in his career) while putting up 27.1 receiving yards per game, the most in his career. With Watson gone, Miller is left with Tom “Has Never Been” Savage under the helm. Without the threat of a competent quarterback, defenses are going to key in on the few offensive threats left on the team.